The Environment — ryatyezbick

The Environment
in collaboration with Cedric Tai
2019

What do we feel when we regard others in struggle? The Environment is an immersive performance that explores the emotional complexity of our relationship to ourselves and others through a tactile environment and sound. Based off of Yezbick’s previous work, Hook & Loop, The Environment features live performers in head to toe industrial-grade Velcro suits and masks. This piece places the audience in a charged installation evoking questions around current social issues related to spectatorship, complicity and care.

The anonymous performers repeatedly collide and stick to one another and their environment, including a Velcro floor constructed of pathways of hook and loop. Improvised and choreographed movements between the performers creates a distinct soundscape of Velcro, creating an enveloping tension between the performers and the audience. The performers take the viewer through shifting emotional engagements (frustration, play, pleasure, tenderness, anger, violence), actively altering how the piece is heard and interpreted. The performers appear as a shadow self, a mirror of each other and the audience. Is this an inner shadow or a discrete other in struggle?

RYAT ˈrī-ət